“It’s better if you take a car for the attack and not a bomb“ - BILD chatted with this ISIS killer

“It’s better if you take a car for the attack and not a bomb“ | BILD chatted with this ISIS killer

Syria in the summer of 2015: in the ancient ruined city of Palmyra, Austrian ISIS terrorist Mohamed Mahmoud murdered prisoners. Mahmoud is one of the ISIS instructors who pushes me, the BILD reporter, to carry out an attackFoto: ISIS-Propaganda

How does ISIS recruit its attackers in Germany? What are the last instructions before the terrorists strike and kill as many innocent people as possible? For months, BILD reporter Björn Stritzel pretended to be an Islamist willing to carry out an attack (always in consultation with the security authorities).

In a new series, BILD documents the chats with the ISIS terrorists.

BILD reporter Björn StritzelFoto: Björn Stritzel

My mobile phone vibrates just before midnight. For some months, nobody had been in touch with me. Now it’s the German “brother” again. He wants to remind me of my duty. My duty to engage in a murderous attack. “I hope you are in best Iman,” he writes in the typical jihadist jargon. “We had some internet trouble, so we were unable to contact you for a while.”

The German again pushes me to strike soon. Every day that passes without an attack is dangerous, he says, because the “kuffar police” – the police of the “disbelievers” – could foil my plan. “Just grab a knife and slay your neighbour – they don’t expect that!”

Auch Interessant

Eventually, another German-speaking ISIS terrorist contacts me. He says he knows from the German “brother” that I want to carry out an attack and wants to help me. There is evidence that this is a familiar and infamous jihadist: the Austrian Mohamed Mahmoud aka Abu Usama al-Gharib.

Mahmoud was imprisoned from 2007 to 2011 because of his propaganda activities for al-Qaida. After his release, he went to Germany, where he managed the jihadist group Millatu Ibrahim, together with the German Denis Cuspert. The group was the decisive organiser of the clashes in Solingen.

How does ISIS recruit its attackers in Germany? For months, BILD reporter Björn Stritzel pretended to be an Islamist willing to carry out an attack.

In 2012, the Minister of the Interior banned Millatu Ibrahim. The core circle surrounding Cuspert and Mahmoud first moved to Egypt and Libya before joining ISIS in Syria. Mahmoud’s most infamous appearance took place in the ancient ruined city of Palmyra in the summer of 2015. The first entirely German-language ISIS video shows Mahmoud and the jihadist Yamin Abou-Zand from Bonn shoot two prisoners. Mahmoud called for attacks in Germany even back then.

One year later, he believed he had found a “brother” who was willing to carry out an attack.What Mahmoud does not know: he already had an argument with this pretend-brother. I had written an article about him over a year ago. Mahmoud then invited me to come to Syria – where he was waiting in order to cut my head off.

Die Chat-Verläufe mit ISIS

Now he urges me to finally strike against the disbelievers. I tell him that my attempts at building a bomb have failed. However, D. – as the account is called behind which Mahmoud is probably hiding – has advice: “We are happy to help. Look, akhi, give up building a bomb, that is too dangerous, and a small mistake will ruin everything. It is better if you hire a car, or if you take one from somewhere and drive into a crowd.”

In order to buy time, I explain that I do not have a driver’s licence. The instructor of Riaz Khan Ahmadzai – the ISIS attacker from Würzburg – also wanted to talk him into a car attack. But Khan had no driver’s licence. In the end, he used an axe and injured five people on a regional train.

When I ask again whether he could help me build a bomb, D. – aka Mahmoud – becomes angry: “Look, the brother who did the attack in Ansbach only killed himself and no kuffar.” Mohammed Daleel, who blew himself up in Ansbach, was repeatedly publicly celebrated by ISIS as a “martyr” and “soldier of the Islamic state”.

In truth, however, the terror group’s instructors seem to regard the attack of the “noble knight” as a failed operation, because no “kuffar” were killed. However, ISIS would never publicly admit that, because it would damage the reputation of their “martyr”.

It is 45 degrees in the shade as we walk through the ruins of the former ISIS stronghold of Mosul. The bodies of the fighters lie in the streets.

So D. tries to convince me of a different idea. “Today, a video will be released, inshallah, that will show you how to do various things. The video will explain to you in detail how to handle a knife.” A few hours later, the official ISIS media department publishes a video from Raqqa. The video is among the most brutal things that the terror organisation has ever published.

Read tomorrow: This is how ISIS gives video-directions on how to “slaughter the kuffar”